IOGear GWU623 Wi-Fi Protected Access WPA, Wide Area Network WAN, Wired Equivalent Privacy WEP

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA)

The Wi-Fi Alliance put together WPA as a data encryption method for 802.11 wireless LANs. WPA is an industry-supported, pre-standard version of 802.11i utilizing the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP), which fixes the problems of WEP, including using dynamic keys.

Wide Area Network (WAN)

A WAN consists of multiple LANs that are tied together via telephone services and / or fiber optic cabling. WANs may span a city, a state, a country, or even the world.

Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)

Now widely recognized as flawed, WEP was a data encryption method used to protect the transmission between 802.11 wireless clients and APs. However, it used the same key among all communicating devices. WEP’s problems are well-known, including an insufficient key length and no automated method for distributing the keys. WEP can be easily cracked in a couple of hours with off-the-shelf tools.

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